Following an EU-wide tendering process, in January 2007 WABAG received an order from the city of Rzeszów for the refurbishing and technical expansion of its existing drinking water treatment plant. In November 2008, barely two years later, the plant went into operation exactly as scheduled. Since then, some 400,000 inhabitants in the region have been enjoying an extremely clean drinking water supply. On Friday 3 April 2009, the city of Rzeszów and all the companies and institutions involved in the project celebrated the opening of the plant.
With a population of 160,000, Rzeszów is the largest city in south-east Poland and lies in the lowlands of the Carpathians on the flood plain on the River Wislok, close to the borders with Ukraine and Slovakia. The region only has limited reserves of ground water and therefore takes its drinking water from surface water sources such as the Wislok. The technology and equipment of the existing, old plant for the treatment of the river water no longer corresponded with current drinking water quality demands and therefore needed comprehensive updating. With the support of the EU Cohesion Fund, the city invested some €21 million in this ambitious scheme, WABAG having convinced the commission with a precise, technically efficient and economically competitive tender.
Plant modifications and enlargement during operations
The contract involved the refurbishing of the two existing water lines and the addition of new process stages in order to achieve a plant upgrade. A further challenge was posed by the requirement that the supply of drinking water should not be interrupted during the entire project. Accordingly, the supply was maintained by means of the phased renewal of the existing lines and parallel construction work on the new sections.
Integration of additional barriers against water impurities
Following completion of the work, the plant now disposes over a modern multi-barrier system, in which all the impurities in the river water are degraded and removed by mechanical, biological and chemical process stages. The main components consist of pre-ozonation, coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, two-layer filtration, main ozonation, activated carbon filtration and disinfection. These guarantee safe adherence to European drinking water standards and in addition, the limits applying to the majority of the parameters are clearly undercut, e.g. with regard to turbidity and bacteriological values. The updated drinking water treatment plant in Rzeszów produces 84,000m³ of the very cleanest drinking water daily and can thus supply both the population of the city and its surrounding districts.
WABAG was responsible for the construction work, the engineering, sourcing and supply of the mechanical systems, installation, plant commissioning and the training of the operating personnel.
A reliable partner for complete solutions
The Rzeszów plant is the second drinking water treatment facility to be planned and built by WABAG in Poland. Since the winter of 2006, an innovative WABAG plant has been producing 24,000m³ of clean drinking water daily in the pilgrimage centre of Czestochowa, where the process technology concept is based on the BIODEN® biological dentrification process and is specially designed to reduce the nitrate content in the local ground water.
Ireneusz Janik, who accompanied the Rzeszów project from the outset, provides the following résumé: “With the high quality and punctual completion of both plants (in Czestochowa and Rzeszów), we have demonstrated that we are a competent and reliable partner to our clients. The combination of experience, know-how and innovative strength makes WABAG an attractive contractual partner as a planner, builder and operator of drinking and wastewater plants.”
